The Wall Street Journal has an amusing story about how Baby Boomer VCs are trying to get hip and relate to twenty year old hot shot entrepreneurs.
Forty-year-old and 50-year-old venture capitalists — often more accustomed to private jets and second homes than to hanging out with kids in bars — are now heading to beer-soaked parties to meet 20-year-old techies. One investment firm invited entrepreneurs to a hip-hop concert. Another venture capitalist, sensing a networking opportunity, is organizing a bowling team to compete in a new league formed by young startup executives.
Other investors are taking notes at industry tech conferences where panels of teenagers discuss their favorite video-Web sites and cellphone games. Last year, Shasta Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif., commissioned its own research to survey middle schoolers about their personal Internet use. The results, which highlighted the heavy teen use of “social networking” and blogging sites like MySpace.com and Xanga.com, were “very revealing,” says Tod Francis, a 46-year old Shasta partner.
My advice as someone who makes a living working with twenty-something entrepreneurs? Be yourselves! Remember, you are about the same age as their parents in many cases. The more you try to act like them, the more they will roll their eyes and laugh at you when you walk away.
(Thanks to Andy Tabar, one of Belmont’s own young techie entrepreneurs, for passing this along).
I’ve been saying for a while that the new generation of kids coming through will be interviewing us greybeards in the fight for talent.
It may cause surely some uneasiness when your employee turns to be 20 years younger than you. But the best advice is to turn it into your advantage and not to behave in a superior manner.